Grand Valley State University

Students, parents and faculty of a K-8 Detroit charter school learned Tuesday that their school is being shut down.

Southwest Detroit Community Schools and the landlord of the building couldn’t reach a leasing agreement, meaning school administrators couldn’t cover the cost of the lease. So the landlord, Turner Impact Capital, decided to evict the school.

Grand Valley State University has named its next president. Philomena Mantella will be the fifth president to serve the university in its nearly 60-year history. And she’ll be the first woman in that role.

Mantella comes to GVSU from Northeastern University in Boston, where she’s the senior vice president and chief executive officer of the Lifelong Learning Network.

Grand Valley State University announced Wednesday that its president, Thomas J. Haas, plans to retire in 2019.

Haas became the fourth president of the university in 2006. Since then, Grand Valley has grown considerably, adding 30 undergraduate programs and 16 graduate programs. With over 25,000 students, it's now the fourth largest university in Michigan.

Stateside’s conversation with Leigh Rupinski and Jacklyn Rander, co-hosts of the “To the Letter” podcast by Grand Valley State University’s special collections.

One way to learn history is through textbooks and lectures. Another is through the words and handwriting of the people from our past. That’s right: letters, something today’s college students don’t see too much of.

Students at Grand Valley State University are getting a chance to experience the emotional and historical power of letters through a podcast called To the Letter.

Grand Valley State University's Regional Math and Science Center is collecting eclipse glasses for a 2019 total solar eclipse that will be visible from the Pacific Ocean to parts of South America.

The Holland Sentinel reports that glasses used to view the sun during the August 21 eclipse over a long stretch of the United States will be sent to schools in South America and Asia through Astronomers Without Borders.

Michigan's philanthropic organizations are facing a changing climate of giving.

Movement of money within the nation's wealthiest families, low wages for many of today's young people, political polarization and the erosion of government safety nets are just some of the many drivers impacting how people give and how charities organize themselves.

Today's contributor to The Next Idea has been watching many of those trends and others that affect charitable giving.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder promoted his business skills when first running for office, but those skills are now being questioned as the Flint water crisis continues to be a government nightmare. Grand Valley State University is taking the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made by the Snyder administration.

Marie McKendall is a business professor at GVSU who will be using the Flint water crisis as a case study in her business ethics class this fall.

“It’s horrible that it happened, but it’s a wonderful case study,” McKendall said on Stateside. “There are structural problems, there are cultural problems, there are social problems and psychological problems. … It’s a far richer case than a lot of the ones we have used before.”

In the course, McKendall wants to make it clear that there isn’t a “villain” to hunt down, but that government incompetence did make the situation worse.

“I think they completely lost sight of the fact that there were people who were being affected by the decisions they were making," she said.

More than 2,800 students log online to attend Michigan Virtual Charter Academy. The state’s largest virtual school is also one of its worst performing districts. Yet every single teacher was rated “highly effective” for the last two years, according to data recently released by the state.

Is everybody at Grand Valley State University just ridiculously friendly and cheery? Is this a thing?

Even in the student club for women who have an extremely high risk of breast cancer, meetings are less Lifetime-movies-about-sadness-and-sisterhood and more like Legally Blonde: a dozen women laughing self-consciously through dance aerobics in leggings and breast-cancer pink tank tops.

After two years of planning, the New Music Ensemble at Grand Valley State University is launching a new project. It’s called “Music in Our Parks.”

The project shows us how nature and landscape affect the process of making music. Here's a video promoting their effort:

Bill Ryan is the director of Grand Valley State University’s New Music Ensemble. He was joined on our program by one of the members of the New Music Ensemble, percussionist and senior music performance major, Josh Dreyer.

Grand Valley State University plans to reinstall a campus sculpture by December 6.

The sculpture was removed on September 17 because students began to ride it.

The 'riding-the-ball' trend was in response to Miley Cyrus's hit single "Wrecking Ball." In the video, Cyrus is naked and rides the wrecking ball as it swings back and forth.

Apparently, the Grand Valley ball was not up to the task. The University said the steel cable that the ball was hung from began to fray, and the sculpture was removed.

Michigan Radio's Lindsey Smith spoke with Tim Thimmesch, the associate vice president for facility services at GVSU. After the sculpture was removed Thimmesch said they would meet with "select students this week to get input on the best options to reinstall the piece."

“The intent is not for anybody to continue to use this as a ride. Again the intent will be to have this reinstalled as a scientific exhibit,” Thimmesch said.

And that's what we really want to know more about, right? The science behind this ball?

This week officials at Grand Valley State University will begin meeting to consider how to reinstall a sculpture that became the subject of several viral videos this month.

GVSU removed the steel pendulum a few weeks ago after several students posted videos online of friends trying to swing on the sculpture. The parodies of Miley Cyrus’ music video “Wrecking Ball” attracted national news media attention.

“It is somewhat of a fun story. It's college students being college students,” said Tim Thimmesch, associate vice president for facility services at GVSU.

An interview with Paul Iseley, chairman of the economics department at GVSU's Seidman College of Business.

What's the state of entrepreneurship in West Michigan?

That's the question tackled in a new report from Grand Valley State University's Seidman College of Business. It finds that in just four years, there's been a big change in the way people think about being entrepreneurs.

We wanted to take a closer look at that changing mindset and find out what it means not only for West Michigan, but for the state.

Paul Iseley is chairman of the economics department at Grand Valley State's Seidman College of Business. He joined us today from GVSU.

Economists predict the economy in West Michigan will grow at a slow but steady pace this year.

“I mean we’re really looking at another year that feels like last year which isn’t so bad,” Paul Isley, chair of Grand Valley State University’s Seidman College of Business, said.

“We're growing here in West Michigan. We have a potential that by the end of this year at least some areas of West Michigan will finally be above, employment wise, where we were in 2000, which will be really a hallmark,” Isley said.

An 8-ton research buoy that’s been floating around Lake Michigan collecting detailed data about wind conditions offshore has been brought back on land for the winter. With the mild winter the buoy stayed about four miles offshore for twice as long as researchers expected; 58 days instead of 30.

Turning data over to researchers

Arn Boezaart heads the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center that’s operating the buoy from Muskegon. He’s been able to see 10 minute averages of wind conditions in real time. But now that the buoy is back on land, he’s got data cards with wind data for every second the buoy was out there; plus data on bats and birds that flew by.

“I literally keep looking at this plastic bag in my brief case with this data card sitting in it and thinking ‘people don’t realize how valuable this is,” Boezaart said. “I sort of feel like I’m carrying gold bars in my case here. This is really first of its kind data.”

GRAND HAVEN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - Police reports say Grand Valley State University officers continued firearms training at a West Michigan gun range after a first report that stray bullets may have struck a home about a half-mile away.

The Grand Rapids Press reports Friday that the documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the officers were midway through a training session Sept. 29 when a man drove up saying his house had been hit by two bullets.

The police reports say officers at the North Ottawa Rod and Gun Club's rifle range in Grand Haven Township relocated training to an adjacent pistol range.

Later police would learn a contractor working in a nearby development was wounded in the arm.

An eight ton research buoy is out gathering wind data in Lake Michigan. The $1.3 million buoy launched in Muskegon Friday will collect detailed wind data over the next ten years.

Chris Hart is an Offshore Wind Manager at the U.S. Department of Energy. He says there’s only three of these high tech bouys in the world. This was the first one launched in the United States. He says the data will be more detailed than anything they have now.